Holistic Analysis of Global Feminism Publications: a Bibliometric Evaluation of Feminism Literature Between 1975 and 2017
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University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal) Libraries at University of Nebraska-Lincoln Spring 2-27-2021 Holistic analysis of global feminism publications: A bibliometric evaluation of feminism literature between 1975 and 2017 Engin Şenel Dr Hitit University, Department of Dermatology and Venereology, Traditional and Complementary Medicine Application and Research Center, and Çor Beekeeping and Bee Products Application and Research Center, Çorum, TURKEY, [email protected] Seher Doğruer Şenel Dr. Anadolu University, Department of Public Administration, Eskişehir, TURKEY, [email protected] Ghouse Modin Nabeesab Mamdapur Mr. Synthite Industries Pvt. Ltd., Department of New Product Development and Research, Kolenchery, Ernakulam, Kerala, INDIA, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/libphilprac Part of the Library and Information Science Commons, Social Work Commons, and the Women's Studies Commons Şenel, Engin Dr; Şenel, Seher Doğruer Dr.; and Mamdapur, Ghouse Modin Nabeesab Mr., "Holistic analysis of global feminism publications: A bibliometric evaluation of feminism literature between 1975 and 2017" (2021). Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal). 5208. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/libphilprac/5208 Holistic analysis of global feminism publications: A bibliometric evaluation of feminism literature between 1975 and 2017 Engin Şenel 1, 2, 3 MD, BBA, Associate Professor, HoD http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8098-1686, E-Mail: [email protected] 1Hitit University Faculty of Medicine, Department of Dermatology and Venereology, Çorum, TURKEY 2Hitit University Traditional and Complementary Medicine Application and Research Center, Çorum, TURKEY 3Hitit University Beekeeping and Bee Products Application and Research Center, Çorum, TURKEY Seher Doğruer Şenel 4 Faculty of Economics http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3496-8581, E-Mail: [email protected] 4Anadolu University Faculty of Economics, Department of Public Administration, Eskişehir, TURKEY Ghouse Modin Nabeesab Mamdapur 5 BSc., MLISc., Scientist-Information and Documentation http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4155-1987 E-Mail: [email protected] 5Synthite Industries Pvt. Ltd., Department of New Product Development and Research, Kolenchery, Ernakulam, Kerala, INDIA Abstract Bibliometrics is a relatively novel statistical branch investigating academic publications in a certain field. Although there has been an increasing popularity of bibliometric studies in recent years, scientific literature lacks a holistic analysis of feminism literature. To the best of our knowledge our study was the first bibliometric analysis of the publications in feminism literature. All data of this study was obtained from Web of Science databases. All documents produced in feminism literature between 1975 and 2017 were included. A total of 44,920 published articles were found. The peak year of feminism literature was 2017 with 3378 articles. English was the major language of the literature and it covered 83.91% of total documents. The United States of America (USA) dominated the area with 18,127 articles and covered 40.35% of all literature followed by the UK, Canada, Australia, Spain, Brazil and South Africa (n=5035, 3383, 2180, 777, 620 and 472 documents, respectively). Publications related to feminism were produced from almost all regions in the world except for some African and Asian countries. Canada was the most productive country with a score of 91.55 followed by the Australia, New Zealand and the UK (s=88, 81.11 and 75.63, respectively). Eun-Ok Im from the USA was the most prolific author with 40 articles in feminism field. The USA was the predominant country during all the period of 1975 to 2017. University of California System was the most contributor institution between 1975 and 2009 although University of London ranked the first after 2010. Developed countries dominated feminism literature and all 20 most contributor funding agencies were from developed countries. The researchers from developing and least-developed countries should be supported to produce new publications in the field of feminism. Keywords: feminism; feminist; bibliometrics; scientometrics; publication trend 1. Introduction Gender and feminism studies are popular and growing fields of scientific literature in the recent years (Söderlund and Madison 2015). Bibliometrics is a novel statistical branch investigating scientific literature in-depth in a certain field (Şenel 2019b). Despite the increasing popularity of bibliometric studies in recent years, academic literature lacks a holistic analysis of feminism literature. In our study we aimed to investigate bibliometric features of feminism literature during a period of 1975 to 2017. To the best of our knowledge, our study was the first bibliometric analysis of feminism publications in the literature. 2. Methods The data of this study was collected from four databases (Web of Science Core Collection, Korean Journal Database, Russian Science Citation Index and SciELO Citation Index) of Web of Science (WoS, Thomson Reuters, New York, NY, USA). We used only WoS Core Collection four bibliometric network and citation analysis. The keyword we used in our analyses were “feminism”, “feminist” and “feminist theory”. All documents produced between 1975 and 2017 were included. Documents published from England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland were mentioned under the United Kingdom (UK) title. The current population data of the countries was retrieved from the United Nations (UN) Database (Anon n.d.). Info-graphics showing bibliometric networks were generated using VOSviewer software (Vosviewer n.d.). Info-map was created with GunnMap 2 free source (GunnMap n.d.). 3. Results 3.1. General features of feminism literature A total of 44,920 published articles were found between 1975 and 2017. The peak year of feminism literature was 2017 with 3378 articles. Only 59 documents were produced in 1975. There was a big leap in the number of publications between 2014 and 2015. The number of publications increased by 63% in 2015 compared to 2014 (Figure 1). English was the major language of the literature and it covered 83.91% of total documents. The other most used languages of the literature were Korean, Spanish, French, Portuguese, German and Russian (6, 3.6, 2.39, 1.57, 1.44 and 0.29%, respectively). The most studied area was Women’s Studies with 2319 papers followed by Sociology, Literature, Psychology and Law (n=1680, 1464, 1336 and 1278 items, respectively; Table 1). The five top most popularized document types of the literature were original articles, reviews, meetings, editorial and letter (66.57, 26.32, 5.07, 4.39, and 1.00, respectively in Table 2). Table 1. The most studied areas of feminism literature between 1975 and 2017 Research Area Record Counta % of 44,920 a Women’s Studies 2319 82.73 Sociology 1680 59.94 Literature 1464 52.23 Psychology 1336 47.66 Law 1278 45.59 Behavioral Sciences 1205 42.99 Arts & Humanities 905 32.29 History 890 31.75 Philosophy 753 26.86 Religion 738 26.33 Education 695 24.79 Public Administration 581 20.73 Social Issues 370 13.2 Business Economics 347 12.38 Geography 338 12.06 Health Care Sciences Services 296 10.56 Environmental Sciences / Ecology 293 10.45 Medical Ethics 293 10.45 Communication 265 9.45 Total 2803 100 a Total number may exceed 44,920 and total percentages may exceed 100% because certain items were included in more than one category Figure 1. Number of publications in feminism literature by year Table 2. Document types published in feminism literature between 1975 and 2017 Document Types Record Counta % of 44,920a Article 29902 66.57 Review 11824 26.32 Meeting 2279 5.07 Editorial 1972 4.39 Letter 450 1.00 Abstract 218 0.49 Biography 169 0.38 Book 45 0.10 Case Report 41 0.09 Correction 38 0.08 Art and Literature 24 0.05 News 20 0.04 Bibliography 8 0.02 Report 6 0.01 Clinical Trial 5 0.01 Reference Material 1 0.00 Retraction 1 0.00 Thesis Dissertation 1 0.00 Other 764 1.70 Total 44,920 100 a Total number may exceed 44,920 and total percentages may exceed 100% because certain items were included in more than one category 3.2. Global distribution of the publications and the productivity All the countries publishing in the field of feminism were ranked according to the number of publications produced between 1975 and 2017. The United States of America (USA) dominated the area with 18,127 articles and covered 40.35% of all literature followed by the UK, Canada, Australia, Spain, Brazil and South Africa (n=5035, 3383, 2180, 777, 620 and 472 documents, respectively; Figure 2). Publications related to feminism were produced between 1975 and 2017 from almost all regions in the world except for some African and Asian countries (Figure 3). Figure 2. Top ten most contributor countries in feminism literature between 1975 and 2017 Figure 3. Global distribution map of feminism publications between 1975 and 2017 A productivity score was measured for each country publishing in feminism literature with a formula (s=publication number / population x 1,000,000) used in recent studies (Şenel 2019a). Canada was the most productive country with a score of 91.55 followed by the Australia, New Zealand and the UK (s=88, 81.11 and 75.63, respectively; Figure 4). Although the USA had the highest number of publications in productivity it ranked only 5th out of 134 countries publishing articles related to feminism. Figure 4. Ten most productive countries in feminism literature during the period of 1975 to 2017 3.3. Authors, journals, academic meetings, institutions and funding agencies Eun-Ok Im from the USA was the most prolific author with 40 articles in feminism field (Table 3). The highest number of publications were published in the journals of Women’s Studies International Forum, Signs, Feminism Psychology and Feminist Review (n=940, 874, 527 and 416 items, respectively) (Table 4). Proceedings of the congresses of Annual Meeting of The American Sociological Association were the most indexed meeting abstracts in WoS databases (Table 5).